This Mondays Live Session was from Liz Klob. She discussed a very controversial topic in todays classrooms, using mobile devices (ie. cell phones) in the classroom for learning purposes.

A question she asked was would you (the teacher) rather have complete control over the technology in YOUR classroom, or would you rather let your students have control of the technology.. Personally I am kind of on the fence with this one. I would love to bring cell phones into my classroom (to an extent). I think I could give partial control over to the students, but I do not think I would be able to allow students to use cell phones all the time.

Something I really like is QR codes! I think they would be a neat idea to bring into a lesson plan. A way I was thinking could be to do experimental learning in centers.. allow the students to explore and figure out the activities on their own by scanning the code. Or like the example Liz gave in her presentation use it as a scavenger hunt with your students!

I would have to do some experimenting and investigating about other ways to incorporate cell phones in the classroom. I am interning in a grade 1/2 classroom with majority of the class being grade 1. I am not to sure what types of technology these children have because I know when I was in that grade I definitely did not have my own cell phone. So maybe it is possible that the school as iPads, or some of the children have iPod touches to work with!

The opportunities are endless with a little experimentation and investigating I am sure mobile devices in the classroom would be fun and very beneficial to the student and the teacher!

For the second part of this tech task I chose to use The Daily Create option.This was option #4 The Daily Create: Choose 3 Daily Create from 3 different genres and post to the daily create site and yours.

First I chose the photography genre.. and I did The Daily Create 501 which asked to take a picture that expresses good times and upload it to Flickr. This is the picture I uploaded.. and the link to it on Flickr

I think this photo represents good times forsure! What do you think?

The second genre I chose was writing and I picked The Daily Create 504 Write a letter to your 16 year old self. I titled my story To my 16 year old self.. This was a difficult task as I wanted to make this letter meaningful. But a really good challenge, I actually ended up getting a little emotional writing this one!

The third genre I chose was Drawing. I chose The Daily Create 375 Draw a picture of one of your first memories growing up, and upload it to Flickr. I chose to draw my first trip to Disney Land. Here's my drawing!

The Daily Create is really easy to use, and I believe that this could be used in your classroom if you are teaching middle years. You could use the writing genre as prompts for your students in a creative writing workshop! Very easy to use tool, and great that you have tons of options to scroll throug

I have to say this is the hardest tech task yet for me. I browsed through some of the options and it has been a struggle for me to dig into my creative side to complete this task. This was definetely a challenge but I was up for it! Anyways! This tech task was based off of the live session with Alan Levine. He talked about different ways of telling stories and all the available technology *free* we have at the tips of our finger tips! So for this tech task we were asked to complete two of the four options given to us..Here is the link to the actual assignment (Tech Task 6)

So to begin this tech task I picked #2 Five Card Flickr: Tell 2 stories and embed them on your blog.Here is the link to my first story which I called Race Against Time.and my second story which I called Backwards.

I chose to do the Five Card Flickr because I like the idea of how it is a random hand that you are dealt. That way you are not getting too into your thoughts and you are then able to think on your feet. I really like this tool, it is very easy to use and was easy to learn how to make my story. I would suggest using this tool in middle years classrooms as you could incorporate it into the English Language Arts part of the curriculum.

Part 1: TweetI tweeted@gcouros thanking him for sharing his perspective about Personal vs. Professional social media. He gave a view from each side of the fence about this controversial topic in education. In my university classes we are constantly reminded to remember that we are "role models" and should not be posting anything inappropriate on our personal social media feeds as once its on the internet it is there forever.

George made me feel a little more at ease with this idea of keeping your personal feeds but allowing them to be professional at the same time. He mentioned that you should always be aware of what your posting. If you would be embarrassed by a future employer finding a post about you, you probably should not post it.

I've been on the fence for awhile about deleting my Face Book, but after hearing this Live Session I have more reasons to keep my social media feeds.

Part 2: Google YourselfThe name Brittney Evans is a very common name. There is a Dallas Cheerleader whose name is Brittney Evans. I've Googled myself before just to make sure that I cannot find anything about myself. So when I Googled myself I was happy to see that I still cannot find any of the links that popped up lead to me.

Personally, in the future I would like Googling my name to stay this way. I prefer to keep my personal social media feeds private. I do not post many things on my feeds but when I do it is mostly me posting pictures of things that happen in my day to day life. Those things are not embarrassing but I think there needs to be a line between work and personal life. I feel if those two crossed over into my social media feeds I would get rid of it all and walk away from all my feeds. I know what goes on the internet stays there forever, which I am very aware of. I always double check what I post on the internet in the event someone found it I ask myself "how would I feel if my mom saw this? or what if my future boss saw this? or my future children?" Very rarely do I say "I would be mortified if they saw this!"

Part 3: About MeHere is the link to my About Me page! What an interesting website.. I've never heard of it before so it is a little hard to figure out how to navigate around but I think I could get used to it. Kind of a cool way to find people and their personal social media feeds.

After listening to Sue Waters during the live session this morning, I was unsure of what I could do to improve my blog. I know my blog is by no means amazing but I think I am doing alright for a beginning blogger! So to begin the journey of improving my blogs I started scanning through the ECMP 355 homepage and found a posting by Jocelyn Thomas. She posted a link to a site that allows you track how many visits you have on your blog. I ended up signing up for this site and I am now able to see how many visits I have to my blog! The site is called StatCounter. It was incredibly easy to sign up for and really easy to use.I know Sue mentioned to not worry about who views your blog and how many do but right now I find it interesting to know that people are actually reading this! Cause sometimes I get the feeling I am talking to wallpaper.

Also as you can see I have taken Sues' note on how to link things I mention on here to the page I am talking about or referencing. If you click on the words or names that are redish brown colour it will take you directly to the page I was talking about! Such a handy tool to have.

I would like to thank Sue Waters for sharing her knowledge about blogging. Hopefully I can make use of all the information she gave us.

This tech task came in 2 parts. Part 1 for this Tech Task we were supposed to create a Google Form with a few questions on it. Here is the link:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/11UOMAtlXNJ1nH2EQIrSd8Lm3CSX7eK_nb-k3jE4QHJU/viewform

Part 2 of this Tech Task was to explore a little of what Michael Wacker shared with us on Monday nights live session. I played around a little with Google docs. during the live session and what I found so intriguing was the slide show or the Google docs that he was sharing with us. Because they were shared and open to us we were allowed to go in LIVE and change items within his deck. I LOVED this! This would be ideal in group work within our classrooms or even in university. Especially in University it is so difficult to get everyone together at one time to work on a presentation. With Google docs. all you have to do is make a new deck or doc and the document is then live. You and your group can work on the project all from separate computers and on your own schedule! Absolutely brilliant. I think that was my favorite part about Michael Wackers lecture. I am definitely going to be using Google docs more often!

Hi There,My name is Brittney Evans, and I am going into my 4th year (pre-k to grade 5) education at the University of Regina. This fall I will be beginning my teaching career as a intern which is something I am incredibly excited about! Teaching has always been a passion of mine and is one of the things I can honestly say I am good at.

Somethings about me.. I am originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan born and raised. I will be participating in this course from Loon Lake, Saskatchewan where I will be working at the golf and country club there.

I am looking forward to this course to help broaden my resources going into my internship this fall and increase my confidence in working with technology in my future classrooms.